by John Olson
“Okay, then you better scramble,” Lex said. “It’s gonna take a while to winch all that stuff to the top and load the MuleBot.”
“Let’s stay calm and stick to the plan,” Bob said. “We have enough if all goes well. Valkerie, you go up first with some of the gear. I’ll stay down here and load stuff up.”
Valkerie strapped her belt to the winch line. “I’ll leave you one bottle of oxygen and take the rest up now.”
Bob loaded her up with gear. She pressed one foot against the wall and pushed the winch button until the line went taut on her. Then she just stretched out horizontally and hit the button again. The line reeled her in and she walked up the cliff.
Bob went to work frantically organizing the gear. The winch would be able to haul up several hundred pounds at a time, but he would have to ride up with it to keep the container intact. If it ripped on the face of the cliff, they were dead.
In fact, it took four trips up to get all the ice to the top, plus another trip for the rest of the gear.
“Doing okay, Valkerie?” Bob said.
“Sort of.” Valkerie pointed at her left foot. “I got a blister yesterday, and it’s slowing me down.”
Bob checked his oxygen tank, then hers. “We’ve got time. Not much margin, but we’ve got time if nothing goes wrong.” He punched the starter button for the little methane/LOX engine on the MuleBot, and the green light came on. “Lex, we’re underway and we’ve got a straight shot home.”
“See you in a few hours,” Lex said. “And I’m knocking on a wood‑grain‑textured synthetic surface.”
* * *
Thursday, April 30, 1:00 p.m., CST
Josh
Josh watched from across the street as EECOM stepped out of her car and walked into the little pizza joint. Good, she was alone. He’d been almost sure she would be. Whether she was a bad guy or a good guy, she’d never turn in Josh. She had sounded so shocked and happy when he called that morning, he had decided to risk meeting her.
Josh checked traffic, then hurried across the road and into the pizzeria. “Hi, Margaret.”
She turned around, her mouth a little O of surprise, and then she was hugging him. “Josh, it’s so good to see you again.” Up close, she looked exhausted.
“You look great,” he said.
EECOM blushed. “Shall we find a table?”
“Better order first. What would you like?”
They got garden specials with all the veggies you could imagine on them and took a booth in the corner farthest from the door. Josh took the seat with a view of the entrance. He trusted EECOM, but still ...
“So, is the crew getting used to zero‑g yet?” Josh said.
“Oh dear, haven’t you heard?”
“Heard?” Josh had, from Cathe, but he wasn’t going to tell EECOM that.
“They weren’t able to launch. They’re in trouble again, and it’s simply horrible. Bob and Valkerie went off on a mad search for water.”
Mad? Josh raised an eyebrow. “Why water? I thought they already launched.”
EECOM’s face registered surprise. “So you haven’t been in contact with ... anyone?”
“Just you. I walked out last night and managed to get off campus and hide out, but I figured Nate would tap every phone in Houston. I didn’t dare call anyone.”
“Not even Miss Willison?”
Josh shook his head. “She stopped coming to see me more than a week ago. I have no idea why, but ...” He let his voice trail off in a long sigh. Then he hardened his face. “When Jake came by on Tuesday, I smelled her perfume on him.”
EECOM put her hand on his. “Oh, Josh, I’m so sorry.” She even looked sorry. But she didn’t take her hand away.
Josh didn’t say anything.
“I’ve seen her talking to Mr. Hunter a lot lately. They’re going to make him Flight Director, you know.”
“Um, no ... I hadn’t heard.”
“Josh, can I tell you something? For your own good?”
“Sure, Margaret.”
“You’ll think I’m silly, but ... I don’t think Miss Willison is doing right by you. I overheard her talking to Mr. Hunter this morning, and it sounds very much like they’re more than just friends.”
“Jake’s married.”
“That doesn’t seem to have stopped his adventures before, if the rumors are true.”
“I never listen to rumors.”
“Of course not. I don’t either.” EECOM flushed and looked down at her Coke. “But I must tell you that I have seen them together socially. About a month ago. Eating together in the cafeteria.”
Josh coughed to conceal his excitement. “You say they were eating? Both of them?”
“Josh, I’m so sorry. I know it must be terribly hard.” She gave his hand another squeeze.
Interesting. Josh let her cling to his hand for a long second and then pulled away to take a sip from his drink. Eating together? Cathe said she hadn’t even sat down. She couldn’t have. He’d rushed straight to the cafeteria after reading her message.
No, not Cathe’s message ...
EECOM’s.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Thursday, April 30, 11:30 a.m., Mars Local Time
Bob
“BOB, IT’S TIPPING!”
BOB SPUN around and instantly cut the speed on the MuleBot. They’d been climbing a small incline and he’d thought it was safe. Things fall slower in Mars gravity, but they still fall. Bob watched helplessly as the MuleBot tipped to the left and crashed onto its side, a ton of ice strapped to its back.
“What’s going on, guys?” Lex sounded frantic.
“Take it easy,” Bob said. “My mistake, but I’ve still got almost three hours of oxygen. We’ll just reload the MuleBot and keep going.”
“All right, Simon says you guys are behind where you should be.” Lex’s voice sounded tight with anxiety. “Remember, your main mission is to get home alive. Forget the water. Grab as many oxygen bottles and batteries as you can and come on back. Quickest way possible. We’ll refill them when you get home, and we can all go back for the water tomorrow. That ice isn’t going to walk away. I want you here in two hours, okay?”
Valkerie picked up two empty bottles and a battery pack. Bob grabbed three of each.
“Roger, Lex,” Bob said. “We’re on the way.”
* * *
When they reached Stonehenge, they decided to cut through it. Without the MuleBot, they didn’t have to worry about the terrain.
“We’ve only got about a klick and a half to go.” Bob checked his oxygen. “I’ve still got over two hours’ worth.” He checked hers. “You’ve got three.”
“We’re gonna make it,” she said. “We were right and Nate was wrong.”
They crested the ridge and began picking a way down the shallow slope into the natural bowl. The beauty of the place awed Bob to silence. Mars was a hostile environment. Arid. Desolate. Otherworldly. And yet incredibly beautiful.
Valkerie grabbed Bob’s arm.
He nearly dropped the oxygen bottles he was carrying.
She pointed off to the right, toward the place they called the Garden.
Bob squinted in the afternoon glare.
Through the forest of rocks and boulders in the center of the Garden, something glinted in the Martian sun. Something metallic. Something big.
The rover.
Valkerie flicked off her comm link, and Bob’s, then put down her load of gear. Bob put his down too, and they pressed helmets together, creating sonic contact.
“What’s with the cloak‑and‑dagger?” he said. “You don’t seriously believe someone’s in there, do you?”
“Just being cautious,” Valkerie said. “I don’t see how that rover could have just driven itself down there. Either somebody is in it, or they aren’t. Either way, it won’t hurt to keep radio silence.”
“Okay,” Bob said. “But maybe we should go back to the Hab first. Then we could come back with Lex.”
; “But what if it moves while we’re gone?” Valkerie shook her head. “We may never see it again. And the last time we looked, that rover had enough food to feed us for months.”
Bob thought about that. There couldn’t be anybody in the rover. There wasn’t a fifth man. Had never been a fifth man. It was not logically possible for a fifth man to exist. The rover had to be empty.
So how did it get here?
“Let’s just go look,” Valkerie said. “A rover in the hand is worth two in the bush. If you’re right and it’s empty, we can use it to go back and get our water. Bob, it’s got food.”
Bob sighed. He’d rather come back here with Lex. Just in case there was somebody in there. But if there was, that somebody might drive it away. Especially if they saw Bob and Valkerie. Or they might attack.
Here in Stonehenge, it would be easy to dodge the rover. But out in the open plain, there would be no way to run away from it.
On the other hand, if the rover were empty—and it had to be empty—he and Valkerie could drive back to get the water, drive home to Lex, and eat like kings tonight.
“Okay,” Bob said. “I’m with you. Let’s go have a look.”
“I love you ...”
Bob’s chest constricted and his eyes misted over. He tried to say it back, but the words caught in his throat. Finally, he blinked the tears out of his eyes and nodded like an idiot.
Smooth …
Valkerie beamed at him and leaned over to pick up the batteries.
Bob grabbed the oxygen tanks and led the way across the valley, weaving in and out through the largest rocks, trying to keep out of sight of the rover. Just as a precaution.
At fifty yards, they cached their cargo behind a large rock. Bob led the way, scooting from rock to rock as they moved around toward the back of the rover.
Twenty yards. Bob looked at Valkerie. She nodded. Squeezed his hand. He grinned.
Crouching low, he scooted the last few steps.
No blazing machine guns. No lightning bolts. No phasers set on stun. The rover looked deserted.
Bob pulled open the outer door and climbed inside. He reached down and pulled Valkerie in after him. They closed the door and hit the button to pressurize the airlock. When it reached atmospheric pressure, he unlatched his helmet.
Beside him, Valkerie switched off her oxygen and unlatched her helmet too. She shook her damp curls. She looked awful—and better than anything he’d seen in his entire life.
Valkerie pointed to the inner door of the airlock behind Bob.
He reached for the door.
It swung in before he touched it.
As he turned to look, Valkerie screamed.
Something hit Bob in the side of the head.
* * *
Thursday, April 30, 4:00 p.m., CST
Josh
Cathe stopped her car fifty yards short of the security gate. Up ahead, Nate was standing alone at the gate. “You sure about this, Josh?”
Josh watched the lonely figure standing outside the security hut. He had finally tracked down Nate on the phone an hour ago and warned him of his concerns. Nate hadn’t sounded all that impressed with the case against EECOM. It was mostly hunches, circumstantial stuff. But Nate had promised to give him a fair hearing if he came in.
Do I trust him or not? Josh gripped the door handle. Either Nate was going to lead him straight to the cops, or he was going to play square. Josh didn’t get to decide which. All he got to decide was whether to play the game.
“We can always bail,” Cathe said. “All we have to do is turn around and drive away. He’s on foot.”
“You sure you never had lunch with Jake?”
Cathe nodded.
Josh opened the car door. Climbed out. Closed the door. Took a step toward Nate.
Another.
Another.
Nate came toward him and there was nobody with him. A big, fat sloppy grin covered his face, and all of a sudden he was walking real fast toward Josh and there was something wet lighting up his eyes.
Josh kept walking.
Nate opened his arms and bulldozed into him, wrapping him up like a grizzly. His voice shook when he spoke. “Welcome home, Josh. I called all the people you asked me to bring in. They’re ready up in MCC.”
* * *
“Bruce! Good to see you, dude!” Josh shook hands with Bruce Dickey, the Unix system administrator. The console room hummed with a dozen Unix servers. The air was as cold and dry as the computers liked it. Josh shivered and sat down next to Crystal Yamaguchi. A couple of FBI suits hovered just behind her, looking completely out of place on high four‑legged stools.
Cathe came and sat on a stool behind Josh. Nate grabbed the chair next to him.
“I’ve already started monitoring, sir.” Bruce turned to face Josh. “But it would help if I had a better idea what I was looking for.”
“Some sort of command to get queued up on the Deep Space Network,” Nate said.
“No, probably not.” Josh leaned forward. “If you’re EECOM and you get superuser status at 4:00 p.m., you don’t go abusing it at 4:01. Might as well wave a red flag and shout, ‘Arrest me!’ She’ll probably set things up as if she was doing a real security scan. Right, Cathe?”
“She has to,” Cathe said. “That’s her cover. She’ll follow through. My guess is she’ll set up a cron job—”
“Whoa! Buzz word alert!” Nate said. “What’s a cron job?”
“A shell script you set up to be launched at a preselected time,” Bruce said. “Actually, they’re usually daemons, but I know a way—”
“It’s a way you can launch a program automatically when you aren’t at your computer.” Cathe nodded to Josh. “That way, you can be somewhere else with a cast‑iron alibi when the job runs. It can even be set up to erase itself after it’s done.”
“Which means we need to be looking on her computer.” Bruce’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Whoa! She’s got a hot little Sparky.”
Cathe stood up and leaned over Bruce’s shoulder. “Um, Bruce, could you do me a favor before you go fiddling on EECOM’s box? Could you change the superuser password on Josh’s computer? I’d just as soon not have her putting that cron script on his machine. Come to think of it, maybe you should change my account too.”
“Josh is on a PC, so it’s a moot point, but I can set something up on your machine.” Bruce pecked furiously at the keys. “Just rlogging in to your box … Changing superuser password ... now. And we have ... no users other than background processes and me. I’m just going to fire up an event logger. This will show every command executed on your machine.” He typed in something, and a separate window launched on the console. “Next stop, EECOM’s honeypot.” He opened another window. “Logging in right ...”
“Wait,” Cathe said. “She’s probably got her machine wired pretty tight. The second you log in, she’ll see what you’re up to.”
Bruce leaned back and looked at her. “I thought that was the idea. Take a swim in the honey and watch the watcher. See how she responds.”
“Not as superuser.” Cathe shook her head. “I know! I have an account on her machine for running sims. Why not log in as me? That should spark some activity. She’s real fond of me, isn’t she, Josh?” Cathe turned to Josh with an impish grin.
“She’ll be on Cathe like ugly on a gorilla.”
“Score one for the little lady in blond.” Bruce rolled back away from the keyboard. “Be my guest.”
Cathe typed in her username and then her password, then stepped back and sat down by Josh.
“All right, then. I’ll just monitor the processes,” Bruce said. “And how about I start by grepping through her files? Something big and ugly to put a little strain on the system.”
Bruce began typing. “Okay, there it goes.”
Silence for fifteen seconds.
A command appeared on the event logger.
“Score a point for EECOM,” Bruce said. “She’s trying to log in as superuse
r on Cathe’s machine. But oops! The punt is blocked, ladies and gentleman. The old superuser switcharoonie got her. Two‑zero Cathe!”
Josh leaned forward. “What’s EECOM doing?”
“She’s trying to get into my machine,” Cathe said. “She’s suspicious and wants to know what I’m doing on hers.”
Another line appeared on the command logger.
“Uh‑oh, EECOM tries an end run,” Bruce said. “She’s trying to log in as Cathe Willison herself. Here comes the password attempt and it is ... denied! EECOM is tackled for a loss. Sorry, babe! Random guesses aren’t going to cut it.”
Josh stared at the eight characters on the screen: worfRat5. His fingers clenched the edge of his chair and all of a sudden he couldn’t breathe.
Bruce was on his feet. “And EECOM picks herself up and makes another login attempt as Cathe Willison. This time with ... a different password, and she is ... into the end zone! Touchdown, EECOM!”
“She knows my password!” Cathe shrieked. “That’s my password she just typed in. Nate, did you see that?”
“What’s it mean?” Nate said.
“It means she can log in as me,” Cathe said. “Right, Bruce? She could send e‑mail masquerading as me. That’s how she got Josh out of his office that day. And how she sent Jake an e‑mail.”
“That’s real interesting.” Nate turned to Agent Yamaguchi. “But don’t we kind of need more evidence than that?”
Josh sighed deeply, wishing he didn’t have to say it. “You need more evidence? How about this? That first password she typed in? Did you all see that?”
“It failed,” Bruce said. “She messed up.”
“You might say she messed up,” Josh said, “because she typed in my password.”
A collective gasp ran around the room.
“She knows my password, Nate,” Josh said. “She could have logged in to my computer and hacked the Russian machine. Nobody else knows my password except the Hampster, and his alibi is pretty tight.”